Prior to the eighth anniversary of 9/11, researchers at Trend Micro, an anti-virus software company, warned on their blog that Google searches of the term “September 11″ lead to “rogue AV malware.” Malware, short for malicious software, is software designed to infiltrate a computer without the owner’s knowing it. Malware includes computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, rootkits, spyware, misleading adware, crimeware and other malicious and unwanted software.

As with most malware, the perpetrators behind the TROJ_FAKEAV.BOH virus are unknown. The obvious question is who stands to gain from this exploit? If the creators of this particular malware wanted to spread their virus far and wide, they would likely use a more popular search term — for instance the name of a celebrity or popular television show.

Excuse my paranoia, but the obvious culprit here is the government, not a band of rogue hackers and virus programmers. The government — in league with the Mockingbird corporate media — have turned somersaults in a tireless effort to debunk and discredit the 9/11 truth movement and derail any attempt to initiated a new and independent investigation. “The people behind FAKEAV still show no sign of slowing down,” writes Jessa De La Torre, threat response engineer for Trend Micro — and they won’t until they scare everybody away from investigating 9/11.

Rumsfeld’s Pentagon unleashed a “shadow war” of covert special-forces computer and internet operations soon after 9/11. “But unlike rebellious teenagers sitting at their bedroom computers, these hackers work for intelligence agencies and have advanced training in computer science, math and cryptology,” the Montreal Gazette reported in October, 2001. More recently, General Dynamics Corp., Lockheed Martin Corp., CACI International Inc., Northrop Grumman Corp., and Raytheon Co. competed for “cyber warfare contracts as the Obama administration prepares to spend billions to obtain cyber warfare capabilities to outperform the Chinese and Russians,” according to Washington Technology.

Free exchange of information, according to the Pentagon, is a threat. “The Pentagon’s Information Operations Roadmap is blunt about the fact that an internet, with the potential for free speech, is in direct opposition to their goals. The internet needs to be dealt with as if it were an enemy ‘weapons system,’” writes Brent Jessop. “It should come as no surprise that the Pentagon would aggressively attack the ‘information highway’ in their attempt to achieve dominance in information warfare. Donald Rumsfeld’s involvement in the Project for a New American Century sheds more light on the need and desire to control information.” The PNAC document, Rebuilding America’s Defenses, states: “It is now commonly understood that information and other new technologies… are creating a dynamic that may threaten America’s ability to exercise its dominant military power.”

Last year, according to Wired, the U.S. Special Operations Command suggested “clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers” to fight against the enemy. The 2006 report for the Joint Special Operations University, “Blogs and Military Information Strategy,” suggested co-opting bloggers, or even putting them on the payroll. “Hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering,” James Kinniburgh and Dororthy Denning wrote.

The effort was a follow-up to a Pentagon program that worked “with a carefully culled list of military analysts, bloggers, and others who can be counted on to parrot the Bush Administration’s line on national security issues,” Ken Silverstein wrote for Harpers.

Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security actively recruited hackers who “think like the bad guy,” National Terror Alert reported.

Considering the above, it is not a stretch to conclude that the Pentagon would infect 9/11 searches with malware. Once again, cui bono –the principle that probable responsibility for an act or event lies with one having something to gain — comes into play.